High School Senior sues trucker, others for coma-causing injury

Posted on Aug 29, 2014 11:45am PDT

LOUISA – Brooke Castle, a senior at Lawrence County High School,
has filed a Civil Action in the Lawrence Circuit Court requesting payment
of $1 million in past and future medical bills plus another $9 million
in damages allegedly sustained when a vehicle operated by Felicia Howard,
of Inez, in which she was a passenger collided with a truck owned by Kinser
Drilling Company of Allen, Kentucky and driven by Jimmy R. Key, also of Allen.

“The fact that this young woman is even alive is truly a miracle,”
John Kirk who filed the Civil Action said, “and it is also a tribute
to the first responders to the accident who saved her and gave her a chance
to live,” Kirk said, adding, “and then there are those truly
wonderful doctors and nurses who did what they did to bring Brooke through
her great ordeal.”

According to the complaint, Brooke was hospitalized for several weeks and
was in a coma for a time. Past medical expenses exceed $200,000, according
to the complaint.

“Brooke was the victim of two factors which contributed to this horrible
accident,” Kirk said. “The truck that hit the car she was
in was traveling very fast and the driver of the car in which Brooke was
a passenger may have made a driving mistake by misjudging the speed of
the truck.”

According to the complaint, the two-vehicle accident occurred on October
16, 2006, one mile south of Louisa on U.S. 23. Castle was a passenger
in a vehicle operated by Felicia Howard. Howard’s vehicle collided
with a large truck owned by Kinzer Drilling and operated by Jimmy R. Key.

Castle alleges that the proximate cause of the accident was speed and that
the truck was traveling at an excessive speed.